Archives

* “We raise the wheat, they give us the corn” : a reflection on life in antebellum Virginia

February 4, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Not too long ago, before the snow fell and kept falling, I drove down to Critz, Virginia, the homeplace of Virginia tobacco baron, J. R. Reynolds. Reynolds’s parents, Hardin Reynolds and Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds, owned several hundred slaves, who worked the 717-acre Rock Spring plantation. One of these slaves went by the name of “Kitty,” a cook so celebrated that her picture now hangs in the restored cookhouse. Nancy Jane – who could apparently write a fine hand – […]

Categories: Africa, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Critz, R. J. Reynolds, Slavery, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes, Virginia

*”Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new”: A Sweet Potato Rhapsody

January 25, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new,” or so confessed St. Augustine, a Catholic saint born in 354 A.D., in what is now Algeria. And I, I could also say the same, about many things. One of them being sweet potatoes, a beloved Southern staple.** It was a Thanksgiving Day. I was five, going on six. Old enough to know what I liked to eat. But that day I added another “yuck” food to a list […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Bibliographies, Southern Food • Tags: George Washington Carver, Old Ebbitt Grill, Southern cooking, Sweet potato, Thanksgiving, Virginia, World Food Habits

* Biscuits and Buttermilk: A New Year and New Directions

January 2, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

After a long fallow period, spent baking (and eating) many Christmas cookies, I have decided to bloom/cook where I am planted, so to speak. Lately I’ve become more intrigued by the cuisine that surrounds me, here in the American South. After all, I’ve basically been a Southerner for over 30 years. Although many cookbook authors write about the South, I feel that something’s missing in most discussions, chiefly an in-depth examination of the English and French impact on the cuisine. […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Gardens, Photography, Pork, Southern Food • Tags: Cuisine of the Southern United States, Culinary History, Glen Alton, Roanoke Times, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Virginia

The Saga of a Virginia Coal Town (Part 1): By the Sweat of Your Face You Shall Eat Bread, till You Return to the Ground, for Out of it You were Taken

December 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I wandered again to my home in the mountains, Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free. I looked for my friends, but I never could find them, I found they were all rank strangers to me. (Traditional bluegrass lyrics, “Rank Stranger”) As I drove along the winding roads toward the coal town of Pocahontas, Virginia, dilapidated trailers and several abandoned Victorian houses lined the way, their filigreed porches sagging under the weight of the wild brush, vines […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cabbage, Cooking, Food writing, Hungary, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Coal mining, Cooking, Hungarian Cabbage Roll, Immigrants, Photography, Pocahontas, Pocahontas Coalfield, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Virginia

Grocery bags (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Savoring the Daily on the Fringes of the Coalfields

December 8, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Although grocery shopping here in the United States doesn’t quite reach the challenges I faced when grocery shopping in Morocco or Burkina Faso, the very act of buying food makes me think hard about eating and cooking and just plain living. Shopping for food entails making decisions. What choices do I make when my only option for grocery shopping – so-so Farmers Market* aside – lies with two major grocery chains which ousted a locally operated grocery chain years ago? […]

Categories: American Cooking, Hungary, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Appalachia, Cabbage rolls, Coalfields, Festivals, Grocery shopping, Hungary, Pocahontas Virginia, Southern cooking, Virginia

Cabbage and Black-Eyed Peas, Oh My! An Easy New Year’s Dish with a Long History

December 22, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Yes, I know, you’re overwhelmed with preparations for Christmas. If you’re like me, you’re still trying to come up with THE menu that will knock Uncle Scrooge out of his foul grinchy mood. So how come I’m looking at New Year’s foods already? There’s a good reason — there’s only one thing to eat that day. Black-eyed peas, a gift from a part of Africa ruled by the French for a long time. [They were there as early as 1659 at […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Cooking, France, New Year's Day, Southern Food • Tags: Africa, African Cooking, Black-Eyed Peas, Cabbage, Chou, Dawadawa, New Year's Day, Niebe, Pois yeux noirs, Science Magazine, Senegal, Southern cooking, Striga, Virginia, Witchweed

Thomas Jefferson and His Magic “Maccaroni” Machine

January 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Thomas Jefferson, rightly or wrongly credited with first bringing pasta to the tables of Americans, drew a picture of a pasta-making machine. This drawing, now in the Library of Congress, resulted from a trip to Italy taken by Jefferson in 1787. Don’t forget that “macaroni” served as a generic name for pasta and doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re talking about elbow macaroni … Here’s recipe for Macaroni Pudding from Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book (the recipe actually comes from Mrs. Horace […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Pasta, United States, Virginia • Tags: Macaroni, Pasta, Pasta Making, Southern cooking, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia

Idylls of Cuisine, #44

January 3, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Home Economics, Photography, Southern Food, Virginia • Tags: Appalachian Electric Power, Canning, Cookbooks, Virginia, World War II Food

Chocolate and Coffee Pots from Colonial Williamsburg: Slideshow

December 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Chocolate and Coffee Pots from Colonial Williamsburg collections, a parade of eighteenth-century goodies. Note the lamb’s head on the end of the spout!

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, English Cooking, Photography, Virginia • Tags: Chocolate Pots, Coffee Pots, Colonial Williamsburg, Eighteenth Centucky, Kitchen Equipment, Southern cooking, Virginia

Idylls of Cuisine, #43

December 27, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Cooking, English Cooking, Photography, Southern Food, United States, Virginia • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, Food Photography, Virginia

Civil War Christmases

December 10, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton. Telegram from William Tecumseh Sherman to Abraham Lincoln, December 22, 1864 Many authors write about the austerity of American Christmas celebrations prior to the Civil War (1861 – 1865), but that’s because those writers focus on the North’s Puritan heritage. Most of our current ways — mostly Germanic in origin — of […]

Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Accomplisht Cook, American Cooking, Christmas, Civil War, Eggnog, English Cooking, Menus, Robert May, Southern, Thomas Nast, Virginia

Christmas Dinner at Mount Vernon, 1790

December 9, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

George Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, served as the backdrop for many scrumptious dinners, cooked by Washington’s slave cooks. Just reading this menu* makes my lips twitch and my fingers itch for my wooden spoons. Note that even at the relatively late date of 1790 and independence from England, there’s a soup called King’s Soup … . It took our forebearers a long time to cease thinking of themselves as English. At least when it came to the table. An […]

Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Christmas, George Washington, Menus, MOunt Vernon, Southern cooking, Virginia

Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg

December 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Now Christmas comes, ‘tis fit that we Should feast and sing, and merry be; Keep open house, let fiddlers play, A fig for cold, sing care away; And may they who thereat repine, On brown bread and small beer dine. Virginia Almanack 1766 To paraphrase former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: There’s the Williamsburg Christmas we ought to have and the Williamsburg Christmas we actually have. And thus are culinary myths born. Modern-day Williamsburg Christmas only faintly resembles Williamsburg Christmases […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Cooking, English Cooking, Oysters, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Colonial Williamsburg, English Cooking, Southern cooking, Virginia

Christmas in Antebellum Virginia: Part II

December 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dey ‘s a-wokin’ in de qua’tahs a-preparin’ fu’ de feas’, So de little pigs is feelin’ kind o’ shy. De chickens ain’t so trus’ful ez dey was, to say de leas’, An’ de wise ol’ hens is roostin’ mighty high. You could n’t git a gobblah fu’ to look you in de face– I ain’t sayin’ whut de tu’ky ‘spects is true; But hit’s mighty dange’ous trav’lin’ fu’ de critters on de place F’om de time dat log commence a […]

Categories: Africa, American Cooking, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, Menus, Pork, Recipes, Southern Food, United States, Virginia • Tags: Booker T. Washington, Cooks, Edna Lewis, Liver Pudding, Plantation Cookery, Slavery, Southern cooking, Virginia

Good Golly, Miss Molly: Mary Randolph’s Boarding House

September 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In March, 1808, readers of The Richmond Virginia Gazette would have read the following advertisement in the pages of that newspaper: “Mrs. RANDOLPH Has established a Boarding House in Cary Street [Richmond], for the accommodation of Ladies and Gentlemen. She has comfortable chambers, and a stable well supplied for a few Horses.” Author of The Virginia House-Wife and affectionately named “Queen Molly” by her friends,* Mary Randolph opened her doors to paying customers when her Federalist husband, David Meade Randolph, […]

Categories: American Cooking, Milk, Rice, United States, Virginia • Tags: American Cooking, Boarding Houses, Cooks, David Meade Randolph, History, Karen hess, Mary Randolph, Refrigeration Invention, Samuel Mordecai, Southern cooking, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, Virginia House-Wife

Baking in Colonial Virginia

March 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lara Templin, an historical interpreter at Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, demonstrates how people baked bread over 400 years ago, in a Cloam oven. Click on the picture to go to the video, shot by Culinary Media Network:

Categories: American Cooking, English Cooking, Video • Tags: Colonial Cooking, Jamestown, Lara Templin, Southern cooking, Virginia

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life